Sunday, October 18, 2015

Coconut Milk Soap

Well, that's another batch of soap finished. Coconut Milk soap was the first soap I made once I got back into making soap. My first batch was made in August and is almost gone now. It's a lovely gentle soap with creamy lather that feels so good even on my face.

In the above picture, it's the soap at the front (the one at the back is Castile, 100% olive oil soap). At the time, I didn't have a proper mold and was using a square baking pan lined with plastic wrap (if I remember correctly).

This time, I made one small change to the recipe by adding 5% castor oil; otherwise, it's the same as the above batch. Interestingly, it's a completely different colour!

Even though I'm using the same brand of olive oil pomace as I have for every one of my soaps, this tin seems to have a much greener oil than the previous cans. It's turned the soap a darker colour than the first batch of this soap. Apparently there is no consistency in oil colour from batch to batch.

Right now, I have the mold in the oven to promote gelling. It's a process called CPOP (cold process hot process). I preheated the oven to about 170ºF, then turned the oven off but leaving the light on. Hopefully, this will allow the soap to gel completely.

The recipe this time:

65% Olive oil
30% Coconut oil
5% Castor oil

SF of 5% and the water:lye ratio of 1.5:1 (or 40% lye concentration)
If you're into that kind of thing, it has an INS of 150

In this case, I didn't use water to dissolve the lye, I used full fat coconut milk, 2 chunks of frozen and the remainder refrigerated. It traced quickly and I ended up spooning the last bits on to the top of the soap.